Adding support for `cat a.out | size -`

Nick Clifton nickc@redhat.com
Wed Nov 8 08:42:00 GMT 2017


Hi Ahmad,

>>> In any case, this would still be a breaking change, because size - reads a - file at the moment. Should I add a command line flag?
>>
>> Yes.  Presumably "--" would be the appropriate flag.
> 
> Just to make sure, so you are ok with breaking backwards-compatibility here?
> A build script that used - as file name and called `size -` on it would no longer work and would have to be changed to `size -- -`.

Yes, I think that this will be OK.  Although to be helpful to distribution
packagers it would be nice if there was a configure time option that could
disable this new behaviour.  That way, if too many users complain to a 
distribution maintainer they can choose to turn the feature off.  (But
honestly I doubt if anyone will complain.  Having a file named "-" is going
problems with lots of other tools, not just the binutils).

Cheers
  Nick



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